I should add that there was a third game, the Inspector Gadget game which were the three games I first introduced to my oldest son. We used to play it on a mame emulator on my old PC when he was 4, and we would spend hours on these three games. A few years ago, he had asked me if we could get these games working on a few retro gaming consoles I acquired, and that worked until I began running into problems with games or the consoles that decided to stop working. The plan was to get these games setup so I wouldn't need a Phd in gaming to get it working on a TV screen, and the only ones that seem to cater to this are the ones which offer several hundred games in one console, which is really an overshoot for me since I only want it for those three games.

I gave it more than just the old college try. I really did. I was after two games - Elevator Action and Ghosts N' Goblins. I was prepared to go through the rigmarole of buying an NES, the original games/carts, and every time I went down this road, I ran into issues. Even when I tried to overlook the tempermental aspects of using aging electronics, it just became too huge a hassle to stage a play area for these two games. I was even prepared to have a custom build made (countertop arcade) but the people who made it wouldn't ship to Canada. Ultimately, I realized the retro gaming market required a tremendous passion and patience which I really didn't have. So I gave in and bought this.

I don't know what you're expectations are in terms of what it costs to ship, but I can assure you it hasn't been that much cheaper using USPS in the last few years especially.
Regardless, I just bought a SNES system from a seller in China. Yes, it's probably going to sit in a bin for a month over at Canada customs and arrive to me maybe two months from now, but it cost me $4. There is no way a package that size would be shipped either by USPS or CanadaPost for less than $20. And it's being sent registerred.
Whenever I buy something from China, I'm reminded of how pointless it is to complain about shipping rates domestically or even within N.A.

The adult nature and depiction of Disney characters which arguably might mortify and make Walt roll in his grave, is certainly what Disney wanted most to go away with the lawsuit. But there's a reason why people say this case set parody laws back by twenty years, and it would be inaccurate to blame it entirely on the way Disney characters were engaging in adult behaviours and consuming drugs. It ultimately came down to O'Neill being ill-informed, but especially his defiance which made a case for parody an impossibility. Namely, he was so eager to be sued that he had a board members son smuggle in copies of Air Pirates into a meeting, swiped the cover to a copyrighted big littlle book (BLB 731), kept the name "Mickey", and then his later decision to defy the court's restraining order, and banning of future sales/reprinting, by publishing a second issue (which also swiped art from a copyrighted Disney strip). These decisions would eventually estrange him from the "pirates", who found him to be reckless, and the long, dragged out legal case, a barrier to them being able to get work again. This is more a case - unquestionably the most famous one of all - of someone going about parody the wrong way, and learning a hard lesson from it.

The Air Pirates case was far more complicated, and in no way should my interpretation in a single sentence sum up the protracted legal case that went on for two decades, but O'Neill didn't help his cause by bringing attention to the works, swiping the cover of BLB 731 for his first issue, and then not listening to the courts banning all future printings/sales, when he published a second issue to raise money for his legal bills.

Hey everyone, shot in the dark idea, but there is seemingly enough of an interest on these boards to hold a virtual toy con (VTC). Same as the VCC held here except it would be exclusive to toys and toy related comics (i.e. transformer, shogun, mask, voltron comics, etc.). I thought I'd throw the idea out there, maybe if there's enough interest, @FlyingDonut @sckao could speak to the practicality of the idea. I would see a benefit to dealing with people on the boards, and I've got a few things I could post in a pinch if an event of this kind would happen in the future. I hosted something like this on RS back in 2012 and it was well received - the big difference is that it was only Star Wars, whereas I could see greater potential for an event that isn't focused on any one particular franchise or toy line.

I have zero to add to the legal argument side, but would an evil overlord of the empire riding a unicorn like he's at a parade be fundamentally different from the image Lucas envisioned? It's particularly interesting to see something Lucas himself appropriated from Kirby now being brought up in a discussion of this sort.

@Buzzetta I must retract my previous statement of these being customs, as the majority of the Han is repro. Frankly, I would assume Han's head is repro also since it's much easier to repro than boil and pop, and search for beaters. He is apparently buying these from a UK seller on feeBay who has been pushing these as repro. The seller is chriss365, and paugildin-6 is his brother-in-law. There has been very recent discussion over how this seller has been connected to a flooding of reproduction weapons referred to as the "Saltburn" repros, named after the UK town where they originated.

I don't think half the dealers you can name in a pinch have leveraged social media in a manner where they would ever notice. I've immersed myself in socmed through a wide range of collectible categories, and while there is a greater overlap happening in the last year, the common characteristic everyone shares in the Facebook and Instagram sharing culture is this appetite to gain kinship by seeking out the handful of keys everyone thinks you need to own to be taken seriously as a collector. IH181 is one of those books. Until you see it happening in front of your eyes, you can't wrap your head around it, and in the context of my comment, you simply wouldn't see this dynamic ever play out on these forums, and I've been here since '02 and can assure you that IH181 was not a book that had the same cachet it enjoys now. The generational gap and migration to sites like Facebook is a big factor in this change.

Without even broaching the issue of an unexplained doubling of values, I'd look at the signs of a new wave of entrants who don't think Wolverine is overhyped because they probably didn't collect in the 90's, that don't think IH181 is a stale book and don't care to look at both the census population or the padded numbers due to pressing. They're not immersed in a community like we were here, where guys were constantly putting this book down. They are the new class of comic 101 who think it's an important enough key to invest in, paying stupid prices be damned.

Some of these groups have sketch admin's running them. It doesn't help that people aren't using their real names, so they've probably gone through a half dozen burner accounts. The other day I was invited by a nitwit that booted me out of a group for calling him on a scam he helped coordinate, I couldn't believe it. Either short memories, or burning brain cells by the bushel with each new alias.

Snakeriverman has a bad rap for selling repro stuff. I have dealt with him in the past, and before he began going full fledged repro. I'm mixed on stuff like this because it's a custom. I've seen these come up from time to time in FB groups, but I don't have a good handle on what something like this should be worth. If you decide to pursue it, maybe ask what he used for the torso, and helmet. These also came with a black Imperial blaster, doubtful any of these are from the POTF Luke, as the helmet alone could run you quite a bit of money, then the blaster. If you do go the route of communicating with him, I'd be interested to hear what he says. My transactions with him were fairly seamless, although I did have one where I had to get on him to complete his end when he sent me a figure missing a weapon.

There's a streak of counter culture in his persona (and a subtle hint of it in the artwork you shared, revealing a Crumb-esque look/feel). Seeing you write he was in Berkeley in '67, was there any record of him demonstrating an interest in Underground Comix artsts or the movement itself?

It's commendable whenever someone brings to light any information or research that might otherwise have been lost to time, so for this fact alone, I appreciate what @sfcityduck has written here, particularly because it was very well presented. I do believe the historical aspects transcend any debate over who is deserving of being called the first great comic collector.
The checkpoints were thorough, and I would agree these are characteristics collectors could relate to as far as recognizing pioneering aspects that would benefit the growth of the hobby. I found myself checking off a lot of those myself, thinking, yeah this makes sense.
There is no doubt his letter arguing against SOTI/Wertham was impressive for a kid of that age. And as we followed his participation and contributions from that point onward, there is no question he was passionate about collecting comics.
Yet there is still an aspect to hobbying which I've always felt is equally important, and that's humility. Whether we can agree comic collecting is a hobby that happens mostly in isolation, and networking is very limited because we tend to be guarded about sharing and resort to goalkeeping to avoid being taken advantage of by greed, it's still an activity I feel people could make just as big an impact quietly and without fanfare. These were dark times, and for this reason, I am left wondering how many other people out there were checking off all these things at near or even an earlier point, but just were going about it using unconventional ways to remain unnoticed, or even using pen names or pseudonyms that we can't track as easily anymore because of passage of time. I've tried to do research on people that were doing their craft in the 50's and 60's and know how near impossible it is to locate information that just didn't get saved or imaged for us to use as reference material 50 and 60 years later. I've always felt starting from an early age gives you an advantage in any hobby, and I think it makes a strong case for Dave Jay in this instance because had he not been published, I don't think we would have seen other areas evolve the way they did. While he may have benefited immensely from being more socially outward in his approach to building his collection and making a contribution to fandom (if that's what we can glean from this), we also see how his coming of age and use of "Beer Dave" recognizes the ackwardness of being known as "Comic Dave" in those times.